Pothole causes Littlehampton woman to break her foot

Joanne Price had been shopping in Rustington on Sunday, August 23. She was about to open the boot of her car, parked in South Parade, when she stepped off the kerb and into the 10cm-deep hole, falling over awkwardly and injuring the foot that was on the pavement.

The 39-year-old, who represents Brookfield ward at Littlehampton Town Council, said she could not get up: “It was a real shock. I didn’t know why I had tripped.

“I just felt really panicked and scared, and I’m not that kind of person at all.”

Thankfully, her husband was nearby purchasing a KFC so he came to her aid and drove to A&E at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, where an x-ray revealed she had broken a bone on the bottom of her foot near her big toe and it would take six weeks to recover.

Joanne, who works as a PA for the managing director of an irrigation company, said the injury had affected her job and meant she cannot drive or walk her dog, so is now having to pay for a dog walker.On closer inspection, she said the pothole had already been resurfaced before and this had sunk, so she called for West Sussex County Council’s highways department to improve the quality of their patching repairs.

She said: “I just feel it could have been horrific if an elderly lady had stepped down off the kerb.

“She would have gone down into that pothole and broken a hip, or even worse.

“It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

A county council spokesman said they ‘hoped the lady is making a good recovery’ but they could not comment on specific incidents. They added: “We take the maintenance and repair of roads in West Sussex very seriously.

“We inspect our roads and pavements on a programmed basis in line with national guidance and carry out repairs according to a published set of criteria.”